94 The Rev. Dr. Wall on the Nature, Age, and Origin of the 



which has been above shown to be his practice. If it be asked why might not 

 the Sanscrit as well as the Ethiopic syllabary be derived from the Greek method 

 of writing, I have to reply, that in the Ethiopic tongue there are no syllabic 

 sounds commencing with a vowel ; it cannot, therefore, be ascertained that the 

 Abyssinian would have expressed such sounds otherwise than he does those 

 which are actually employed by him, and the natural presumption is, that he 

 would have denoted them just in a similar manner ; whereas the Hindoo has in 

 his learned language syllables of both kinds, and writes those syllables in wholly 

 different ways. 



In the third place, the European and older Asiatic alphabets having been 

 rejected as the immediate sources of the Sanscrit syllabary, it remains to be inquired 

 whether this syllabary may not be the offspring of the Ethiopic system. Here 

 the marks of near relationship are certainly very strong. Some of them perhaps 

 may strike the reader's judgment less forcibly than others; but how he can resist 

 their united evidence, I confess I do not see. I shall now submit to him, in a 

 connected series, the different points of resemblance between the two systems 

 which their comparison has suggested. 



1°. Although, in modern practice, two of the Ethiopic characters are repre- 

 sented as letters each of which is, by its several modifications, expressive of the 

 whole series of vowels ; yet it has been shown that, in the ancient use of this 

 system, it was a pure syllabary, containing no letters but such as were of syllabic 

 powers ; and it has been equally shown that the Sanscrit system also was at first 

 a syllabary of exactly the same general nature. — 2°. In the Ethiopic syllabary all 

 the syllables expressed by the several letters begin with an articulation, and end 

 with a vowel-sound ; in the Sanscrit syllabary likewise all the syllables it 

 expresses by single letters, begin with an articulation, and end with a vowel- 

 sound, or with what is considered as such by the Pandits; although it is to 

 be observed, that there are several simple syllables of their language which do 

 not come under this description, and which, therefore, cannot be represented 

 by means of their syllabary. — 3°. In the Ethiopic syllabary certain changes 

 in the shape of each letter denote certain changes in the termination of its 

 syllabic power, and like modifications of shape in different letters indicate like 

 terminations of their different powers. Now this description equally applies to 

 the process which takes place in the Sanscrit syllabary ; the modifying marks, 



